Wli Falls, pronouned “vlee,” is my top recommendation for weekend trips to take from Accra. This was the most beautiful place I visited in Ghana in the year and a half that I spent there. I learned that Ghana doesn’t have a well-developed tourist infrastructure, which is both good and bad. It’s good because it means the only time you’ll feel crowded is in the tro-tro (public bus) on your way anywhere. It’s bad because it means that there’s little incentive for the government or businesses to invest in maintaining trails and keeping them free of trash. It also means that taking weekend trips from Accra isn’t always an obvious adventure, e.g. a trip that should take 4 hours can easily end up taking 12 hours – but that’s a different story.
Wli Falls is a place that gets a reasonable amount of tourist traffic compared to other places in Ghana, partly because of its natural beauty. For that reason, the park is kept relatively clean and that makes it feel like a special escape from polluted city life.
Getting there
The falls are located in the Volta Region and takes about 4.5 to 5 hours to drive to. If you choose to drive, prepare by downloading the maps in advance, it’s likely you’ll lose service for part of the way!
If you take public transportation and taxis it would be closer to 7 hours as you’d probably have to take a tro-tro (public bus) headed to Keta (a town along the coast) and then find a taxi headed north to Hohoe. Public buses can be a bit unpredictable, so be prepared to wait.
Where to stay
Wli Water Heights Hotel & Restaurant was a fine place to stay and within walking distance of the trail head. It turns out there are two locations for the same hotel, so when pulled into the first one, the staff had to direct us around the corner to our actual location – it was weird, but easy to navigate.
A double room was 170 cedis per night ($30), the staff was friendly and the rooms were decent. They were out of ice (normal occurrence) so our hack was to put water sachets in their freezer and then smash them once they froze. That way we made sure we had cold cocktail ingredients for when we got back from our upcoming hikes.
From the hotel to the waterfall trail head, we walked to the main road, turned right and walked until it dead-ended, turned right again and looked for the street sign for Waterfall Street. Then we took the left and found the office at the end of the small street. Simple. Typing “Wli Falls” into Google Maps will place a pin right at the entrance office.
Hiking to the lower and upper waterfalls
Wli Falls is a combination of a lower and upper waterfall. We arrived in the afternoon so we opted to go to the lower falls on our first day and then hike the upper falls the second day. You pay to enter the park, but with that fee you also get a guide. I think the fee was 50 ghs ($9) or maybe it was less – I can’t remember. It was 100% worthwhile to pay that for a full day of hiking and swimming under waterfalls in the mountains.
Take a guide
The guides seemed low-energy, but fine when I was there – they work mostly for tips, so it’s likely they will be pleasant (though you never really know). Our guide told us he makes a couple hundred cedis per month, plus what he can make in tips. Having a guide with you isn’t mandatory, and it would have been easy to follow the cleared trail to the lower falls without one. I found it pleasant to have him with us to point out trees, give a bit of context on trail clean-up efforts, and tell us about his personal experience working there. However, it was very important to have him with us when we hiked to the upper waterfall on the second day. There isn’t one designated trail in some places and it would have been very easy to accidentally wander off in the wrong direction.
Our guide also described himself as an insurance policy of sorts. He explained that if a group goes wandering off with no guide and they get lost or they put their things by the water and it gets stolen, then there is no protection. I did not get the sense that there are many people lurking around the trails and waterfall, but it’s definitely something to be aware of.
The trail approaches the falls from down-river, so we could hear the waterfall before seeing it. In the late afternoon the sunlight pours into the canyon to create a vibrant rainbow at the base of the falls. The combination of sun and spray from the waterfall light up the foliage to an almost electric green. The combination of its ginormous size, the sound, and the bright colors is why I think it’s the most beautiful place in Ghana.
The second day we began the hike to the upper falls at 8am. This hike is longer; it took us about 6 hours, but we stopped for photos, snacks, water breaks, swimming, and just generally took our time because it was wet and slippery on the trail.
We embarked on the hike from the park entrance to the upper falls just after a heavy rain, which meant we quickly found ourselves sweaty, muddy and soaked as our clothes collected water from the tall grass.
By the time we reached the upper waterfall, we were soaked. The combination of wind and spray made it difficult to capture a clear photograph so I put on a suit and went about halfway in the water before I got too cold and backed out. If you do this weekend trip from Accra and you find yourself hiking to the upper waterfall, bring a waterproof bag – even if it’s dry out. The way the wind blew the water from the falls, there was no escaping it; we got soaked, but it was worth it.
The upper waterfall has a completely different feel from the lower falls. It may have been in part due to the weather, but it was much more eery and moody. Visiting two pieces of the same natural landscape that have such different vibes enhanced the whole experience. Everyone visiting Ghana should see this beautiful place with the combination of the lower waterfall in warm afternoon sunlight and the upper waterfall with moody lighting up in the clouds.
The hike back down was actually more difficult than the hike up to the waterfall. The return hike was steeper and muddier as we wended our way down through the trees, and therefore it was very slippery. By the end my legs felt like jelly. Once we reached the bottom of the mountain, we found ourselves back on the same trail we had taken to the lower waterfall the previous afternoon. We walked the remaining 30 minutes back to the ticket office, tipped our guide 50 ghs and headed back to the hotel for jollof and chicken.
The whole hike took us about 6 hours, but we took our sweet time stopping for photos, snacks, water breaks, and swimming. It could be done in 4 hours with a young guide and a more aggressive pace.
Wli Falls tops my list of most beautiful places in Ghana, and is definitely worth a long-weekend trip from Accra, especially if you are borderline obsessed with finding natural beauty like I am. There are so many other great places to see in Ghana including Lake Bosomtwe, Cape Coast, Kokrobite and others – you can read more about other great weekend trips in Ghana here.